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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"U.S. regulators are giving the oil industry and other stakeholders more time to weigh in on a controversial proposal to stiffen standards for wells drilled on federal lands, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell pledged Thursday."

"ANDREWS, Texas -- Republican mega-donor Harold Simmons' remote hazardous waste dump in West Texas began accepting low-level radioactive material Thursday from a federal lab in New Mexico — the latest step in Simmons' vision of a site that accepts all types of waste."

"Washington -- U.S. regulators are directing 31 nuclear reactors similar in design to the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, where an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown two years ago, to take additional steps to help contain radiation and other damage from any accident that is not quickly halted."

"American wheat farmers and a food safety advocacy group filed a lawsuit Thursday against biotech seed developer Monsanto Co, accusing the company of failing to protect the U.S. wheat market from contamination by its unauthorized wheat."

The fracking industry loves to argue that there's no proof its gas-extraction methods cause pollution. One reason they succeed because they settle lawsuits claiming pollution damages by obligating the plaintiffs to remain silent.

"President Obama should press Chinese President Xi Jinping to curb emissions of a short-lived, but highly potent heat-trapping pollutant when the leaders meet this week in California, a group of House and Senate Democrats wrote Wednesday to Obama."

To hear Canada's oil industry tell it, the U.S. State Department's draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is exactly wrong. The EIS said Canada's tar sands oil would be shipped regardless of whether the pipeline is built. But the oil industry says it will double their output.

"The first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season got a little stronger early Thursday as it headed toward Florida's western coast and a new tropical storm warning was issued for a swath of the U.S. East Coast."

"PORTLAND -- A genetically modified test strain of wheat that emerged to the surprise of an Oregon farmer last month was likely the result of an accident or deliberate mixing of seeds, the company that developed it said Wednesday."